Recently, I posted about my plans to trim down some of our living expenses but without returning to my maniacally frugal ways. I wanted to report on how it’s going! Before my new plan, on our weekly shops we were routinely spending about £10-15 more per week than we ought to be to stay on Read More…
Category: Homemaking
Saturday Thoughts on Simplicity
Proliferation seems the great tendency of life. Not just that it tends to become more and more full – like the branchy tree outside our window that suddenly leapt into leafiness one day – but that each branch splits and multiplies. This complexity often manifests itself as a shortage of time. Our commitments have multiplied, Read More…
Why I Become Afraid of Planning Ahead
I should start by saying that, most of the time, in fact I’m a big planner: I like to plan things in advance and know what I need to do, what events are coming up, and feel assured that nothing will be forgotten. Normally, for me, planning includes the following: Making to-do lists, both daily Read More…
Walking Down Memory Lane
On our recent visit to my family’s house in Texas, I decided to pare down the contents of my old room at home. It was never my intention to keep a full room of belongings there after becoming an adult, but when I decided to go to graduate school I ended up with one summer Read More…
Finding Order in Beauty
Recently I was reading a book by Sandra Felton called Messie No More. It’s a bit dated, but interesting because it takes a look into the psychological reasons that people are messy or struggle to keep their homes clean and organised. One chapter is entitled ‘Finding Order in Beauty’, and at first I actually thought maybe Read More…
Saving Money Sanely
It’s time to admit that I’ve often had a very unhealthy relationship with money. And by ‘unhealthy relationship’ I don’t mean ‘It’s just never there for me when I need it, sigh’! Anybody who knows me knows that I’m fairly frugal, but over the years I’ve realised that my frugality sometimes goes to ridiculous extremes. Read More…
Getting Things Done: Organising
I’ve tracked the previous two steps as I’m loosely following David Allen’s plan for being more productive: first I collected my clutter, then I processed it. After that, it was time for what I confess is my favourite part: organising. Organising is what it sounds like: setting up a system of ‘buckets’ into which everything Read More…
Getting Things Done: Processing the Clutter
I wrote last week about the first step in redoing my system for getting stuff done, which was collecting. We ended up with a big ‘inbox’ of papers and other stuff that either wasn’t where it belonged or needed action taken. Sometimes I didn’t even know what to do with the stuff when I put Read More…
Advice from My Mother
It’s Mother’s Day weekend here in the UK, so in honour of my mother and in keeping with my theme of reflection, I wanted to share some of the good advice I’ve received from my mom over the last couple of years. We’ve kept up an email correspondence ever since I moved overseas, but when Read More…
Getting Things Done: Collecting the Clutter
As I mentioned in my previous post about how to get things done, I’m embarking on a project to sort out my personal and work life. Having moved to a new place it seems like the right time. What’s interesting along the way is to think about what the problems in my system of organisation Read More…